Its pretty good Pete. Much prefer the lighter background. Just remember to build a clear crop tolerance in. 3-5mm should be ok. CMYK colour setting too for print.
The scroll ribbon at the top is blank. Something tells me that it should say something there. Is that where the contender's name goes? This makes sense.
The light blue colour is a little out of place. May look better to use the darker blue (same found in the smoke/flame bottom left). You've used strong varying fonts which is difficult to blend together. Maybe good to reduce the amount of different fonts used or change the styles of fonts so that you are not showing such a variance in style.
On the whole - it looks pretty good to me!
